The door lock bypass that almost killed a passenger

Been seeing a lot of guys on here recently talking about jumping the door lock circuit to troubleshoot a stuck car. I get it, you want to save time and not run a thousand feet of pickup wire. But I caught a guy at a site in downtown Chicago last week who had the safety chain completely bypassed with a paper clip. The car was sitting at a floor with the doors open and he had the mainline disconnected so nothing would move. But if someone hit the fire recall or a power surge hit that controller, that car would take off with the doors open. That passenger would have fallen down the shaft before the brakes even caught. I know we all get lazy on a Friday afternoon but this is how people die. The union hall still talks about the guy in 2019 who got crushed because he bypassed a gate switch and forgot to pull it back. Is your shop actually checking for stuff like this during annual inspections or is it just the state guys?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.emma27d ago

Gotta say though, the fire recall usually bypasses door interlocks anyway by design, so that's not really the main risk there. The bigger danger is someone hitting the common mainline or a backup power kickback while he's got the safety chain broke. Even with brakes, a door open run on recall can still take off real quick if the controller sees the signal.

christopherwilliams27d ago

@kim.emma isn't that exactly what happened on that one job where we had a backup generator kick in?